After studying the 35 largest meat and dairy companies, the researchers found that together, the top five alone are already responsible for more emissions than ExxonMobil, Shell or BP.

The authors concluded that if these secretive industries are allowed to continue on their current destructive path, the livestock sector could be responsible for 80% of the allowable greenhouse gas budget by 2050, accelerating environmental catastrophe.

Eventually, a tipping point will come, and the planet will turn into a gigantic slaughterhouse. It won’t be just calves and piglets these industries are killing – it will be you, your children and the children they could have gone on to raise.

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Now the good news: we don’t need to wait for meat and dairy bosses to develop hitherto elusive consciences, nor for governments to develop the backbone to take us off this self-destructive path. There is a simple but significant contribution you can make right here, right now.

Last month, a paper published in the journal Science found that adopting a vegan diet ‘has transformative potential’, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 6.6 billion metric tons (a 49% reduction).

Its lead researcher Joseph Poore said: ‘A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.’

An abundance of evidence backs this up, as the brutal environmental impact of our addiction to meat and dairy has been clear for sometime.

Agricultural scientists estimate that eating meat requires four-and-a-half times more land than is necessary for a vegan diet, which means rainforests and other precious areas are bulldozed to make way for farms.

So each time you eat bacon, or drink milk, you have not only invested in the slaughter of pigs or the abuse of cows, you’ve signed your own death warrant. For this is a problem that is predicted to escalate in the coming decades and emissions for agriculture are projected to increase 80% by 2050.

In the 1980s, people started saying ‘meat is murder’, but it could become even worse than that – meat could mean Armageddon.

The environmental impact of animal farming is clear, so be the change you want to see and stop eating meat and dairy.

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It’s never been easier: all high street chains, including Wagamama, Pizza Express, Carluccios and Nando’s have popular vegan menus. There are delicious plant-based versions of all your favourite foods, from shawarma to chicken nuggets, mozzarella to prawns.

Given that you can get all of those foods without supporting the slaughter of animals or the destruction of the planet, why would you not?